Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, as a network environment has spread, in general, one or more users have shared and used a plurality of image forming apparatuses. Accordingly, a demand for “hold printing” for performing printing after getting through user authentication by the image forming apparatus has been increasing so that a printed product having high confidentiality is not seen by another user when output.
Japanese Patent No. 4033857 discusses a technique for temporarily storing print data transmitted from a host computer within an image forming apparatus having a server function and performing user authentication on the image forming apparatus to print the stored print data.
In the above described printing system, when the print data stored in the image forming apparatus is printed, the user can change a print setting from a user interface (UI) on the image forming apparatus. The print setting that can be changed includes collection printing for collecting a document of a plurality of pages on an application, on a one-page sheet to perform printing. As the case may be, the collection printing is performed in a host computer so that print data, which has already been collectively laid out, may be sent to the image forming apparatus. In the case, a collection setting of the print data, which has already been collectively laid out, may be canceled. For example, the cancellation of the collection setting is carried out in a case where characters become small through the collection printing and are not easy to see by the user or in a case where the user has erroneously performed the collection setting.
To cancel the collection setting of the print data that has already been collectively laid out, data containing a plurality of pages in one page need to be laid out again. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2014-42157 discusses a technique for detecting a margin from image data, which has already been collectively laid out, to find a division area and divide the image data.
However, in a conventional technique, processing for determining and canceling collection printing is performed after converting print data into image data. In this case, the image data is enlarged in accordance with a sheet size, resulting in print quality degradation due to a decrease in resolution.